Fontana School Police Get High-Power Rifles — Wendy Burch Reports

Share this:

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

FONTANA, Calif. (KTLA) — The Fontana Unified School District is arming its school police with new high-performance rifles.

The district bought 14 Colt rifles valued at $1,000 each. The weapons are designed to provide accuracy over long distances.

“In the event of an active shooter on campus, this weapon provides our officers with the tools they need to respond appropriately and mitigate the loss of life,” school police Chief Billy Green said.

He added that his officers attended 40 hours of special training over the winter break.

The rifles were ordered back in October — before the deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn. — but officials say they hope they’ll prevent any future tragedies.

“We ordered them because we identified a critical vulnerability that if somebody were to come onto our campus with a rifle, our officers didn’t have the proper tools to respond to that threat,” Green explained.

However, some school board members are opposed to the move, saying that these types of guns are not needed on school campuses.

“I am appalled that the superintendent would arbitrarily and unilaterally make a policy decision to arm Fontana School Police with high powered rifles,” school board member Leticia Garcia said.

She continued: “I do not think there is ever a need for this kind of arms on our middle and high school campuses.”

“I think she’s misinformed,” Green countered. “Not once throughout the course of this has she reached out to me to find out about why this is needed.”

Green says he wrote a memo to the Board of Education in early December outlining the rifle program.

“Why it wasn’t an issue then and it is now… Your guess is as good as mine,” he remarked.